THE MEDIA BUSINESS; U.S. Cable Unspools Its Wires Across the Globe

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MTV is planning to expand its music video empire to Latin America in October, at which point the only continent where the American cable channel is not seen will be Antarctica.

The channel's ambitious international expansion, which began in 1987 with MTV Europe and MTV Australia, is part of a growing trend among cable channel owners, many of whom think the American market has grown about as much as it can.

"The international area is a very big growth area for cable," said Steven Rosenberg, the senior vice president of HBO International. "Everybody is looking at it." U.S. Market is 'Maturing'

J. Patrick Michaels Jr., the chairman of Communications Equity Associates, a brokerage firm that specializes in media investments, said: "If you look at the list of who is now investing overseas, you see 10 of the top 12 cable companies. Cable is a maturing industry in the United States facing diminishing returns."

Herbert Granath, the president of Capital Cities/ABC Video Enterprises, was an early advocate of expansion abroad. Capital Cities invested in a cable channel in Germany and, with the French channel Canal Plus, in TESN, an all-sports channel similar to ABC's ESPN. Last month, Mr. Granath engineered a merger of TESN and Eurosport, the Continent's largest sports channel, creating the same dominance of sports television in Europe that ESPN wields in the United States.

"For a while we were pretty much alone in this business, except for CNN," Mr. Granath said of the overseas moves. "Now all the old friends are starting to show up: T.C.I., Viacom, the Family Channel."

Tele-Communications Inc., the largest cable operator in the United States, owns, among numerous other holdings, the Discovery Channel, which has established a European version of its programming. Viacom owns MTV as well as Nickelodeon, the American channel devoted to children's programs. Nickelodeon last month announced a joint venture with Rupert Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting for a 12-hour-a-day channel of children's programming. The Family Channel is exploring markets in Eastern Europe, including Romania.

HBO is another prominent cable channel with a thriving international division. The pay-television channel began a Latin American subsidiary called "HBO Ole" in 1991, and has interests in pay-television channels in Hungary, Scandinavia, Singapore and New Zealand.

Cable television, as American viewers know it, is seldom precisely duplicated in international television markets. Cable systems have been well established in some countries; the Netherlands, for example, has five million cable homes, 80 percent of the country's households with television. But more often, cable's reach is limited. Britain has only 480,000 cable homes -- just 2 percent of television-owning households.

In such countries, American cable programming is transmitted through other means, either on satellite dishes or over the air through what is known as a "multichannel, multipoint distribution service." Some of the major cable operators, including Tele-Communications, are also investing in cable systems in overseas markets.

CNN, of course, is the most international of all cable channels. It reaches more than 140 countries. But Sara Levinson, the executive vice president of MTV, said that CNN had a unique approach. "CNN is essentially a U.S. service provided in English for broadcast around the world," she said. "What we have done is customize the MTV service for each market. We have definitely blazed that path." MTV's Customized Marketing

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MTV has customized its channel by using for the most part the local language and using local performers as video jockeys. In Brazil, for example, many locally produced music videos are used and the channel expects its Latin American version will eventually include many videos produced in Central and South America.

HBO, too, has customized its movie-oriented programming to individual markets by dubbing films into local language. But Mr. Rosenberg argued that not all American cable programming is exportable. How-to shows and situation comedies, for example, might not travel well. "Movies, sports, news and music; that's it," he said. "Those are the franchises. You build a franchise and look to expand that franchise."

HBO has sought local partnerships for its international versions. The international versions of MTV each have been set up according to the ownership regulations in each country, Mr. Levinson said. Where it can, MTV owns the channel outright, as it does in Europe and several Latin America countries. Where a nation's restrictions prevent that, it finds a partner and licenses the MTV name, as it has done in Japan and Brazil. 'There's No Time to Do a Study'

Mr. Granath said the cable companies looking to overseas markets are taking the kind of bold action that other American companies have failed to take in recent years.

"I.B.M. and Sears now say things happened while they were studying what to do," he said. "In the television markets in Europe and the Pacific rim, there's no time to do a study."

None of the cable executives would disclose how much money they have invested in their international operations. But Mr. Granath said: "We're spending an enormous amount of time, energy and money. It's not for the faint of heart. The Europeans tend to think these investments should turn a profit after one year. But there's going to be a lot of money lost on these deals. It's a three- to five-year investment curve."

Nor would any of the cable executives predict that revenues from international operations might ever rival revenues attained in the United States. "There's never going to be another U.S. market, with 90 million TV households," Mr. Rosenberg said. "The rate of growth internationally is dramatic, but not the dollar growth."

Mr. Granath added, "I think it will always be thought of as ancillary business."

That assessment could change if the full potential of the international television market could ever be tapped. Mr. Granath said that in the European Community alone "there are more television households than in the U.S."

"And there is a long history of advertisers spending most of their money in print" he added, speaking of Europe. "We're not forecasting that this will ever be a huge business, but it could surprise me."

A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 1993, on Page D00008 of the National edition with the headline: THE MEDIA BUSINESS; U.S. Cable Unspools Its Wires Across the Globe. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe